Presentation Date: September 25, 1997
Chuck Tatum
First wave U.S. Marine combatant at Iwo Jima USMC. First wave U.S. Marine combatant at Iwo Jima, which ultimately saved many B-29 crews on missions to Japan. While digging a foxhole, he glanced up to see one of the most famous sights of the war - the American flag being raised atop Mt Suribachi by the US Marines.
"Iwo Jima - Battle for a B-29 Haven"
"It couldn't be bypassed and it couldn't be isolated. It had to be taken in a conquest of arms." Those are the words of Chuck Tatum, one of the U.S. Marines in the first wave to hit the beaches on Iwo Jima, and the speaker at the Golden Gate Wing's September dinner meeting.
In February, 1945, the toughest battle the U.S. Marine Corps had ever fought was on Iwo Jima, an eight square mile volcanic rock in the Pacific Ocean. It was a battle with a heavy toll, especially for the size of the real estate. 6,821 Americans were killed and another 19,000 wounded in the assault, while 23,000 Japanese defenders died.
Iwo Jima had become a strategic target of great significance by 1944, with the capture of Saipan, Guam and Tinian. These islands had become the forward bases for Air Forces' strategic bombing of Japan, the home bases for B-29 Superfortresses. Iwo Jima was but 650 miles from Tokyo, the only Pacific land mass large enough to support B-29 airstrips.
Iwo was also of strategic value to the Japanese, with radar, communications and fighter airstrips.
"Halfway to Tokyo, the fighter planes rose up from Iwo Jima and attacked the B-29s" Tatum says. "As they flew out to meet them, they could land, refuel, rearm and attack again. Then when they (B-29s) got within a couple hundred miles of Tokyo fighters rose up again. This was costing about 20% (B-29 losses) per raid."
Chuck Tatum was 18 years old in August, 1943. He'd been badgering his mother for two years to enlist with the Marines after seeing a recruiting poster at the post office in Stockton with a Marine in dress blues on the deck of a battleship. "You can imagine my disappointment when I found out that dress blues had been discontinued for the duration."
Tatum suffered a setback when he came down with an illness similar to pneumonia, and had to repeat boot camp in San Diego. He was assigned to Camp Pendleton and the forming of the new 5th Marine Division, where "Manilla" John Basilone (the first Marine enlisted man to be awarded the Medal of Honor and live to receive it) was a Gunnery Sergeant Guadacanal veteran. Tatum learned about machine guns under Basilone's tutelage. In August, 1944 the 5th Division was shipped to Camp Tarawa, Hawaii for more training. In February, the target for the 5th Division became known - - Iwo Jima. It was planned as a five day invasion, based on military intelligence reports of 5,000 Japanese troops defending it. But the Japanese were busily digging caves, building bunkers and adding troops.
Arriving in Saipan and transferring to LSTs, the 5th Marines sailed for Iwo. Tatum's LST lost it's steering en route, but Navy sailors jury-rigged the steering and rejoined the convoy for the invasion.
Steak, eggs and coffee were the last meal on the morning of the invasion. After a tremendous bombardment, the Marines loaded into the Amtracs, and when the LST doors opened, Tatum says, "We could see Surabachi dominating the horizon. And Iwo Jima looked evil and foreboding."
Tatum was in the first assault wave, hitting Red Beach Two, and was surprised they didn't receive any Japanese fire during the half hour ride in. When the Amtrac rolled up onto the black sand, it turned hard right and the door dropped. Tatum and his assistant gunner Pfc.Steven Evanson exited and began cutting loose the K-ration containers lashed to the side of the tractor. "Looking forward I could see the first of the black sand terraces that looked like small mountains. Steve and I ran towards the terraces and discovered to our dismay that our forward progress was nearly impossible. We were trapped in the devil's own sand trap. Other assault waves were joining us in the trap. We were piling up on each other."
That's when the Japanese opened fire - - a hailstorm of metal that hit the trapped Marines. Tatum says there was a lone Marine walking the beach, yelling at the troops to get moving or die there. It was "Manilla" John Basilone.
Basilone pointed out a Japanese bunker for Tatum and Evanson to target. Their machine was jammed by the beach sand. Tatum used a toothbrush to clean the breech, got the gun working and began pouring rounds at the pillbox. Meanwhile, another Marine set plastic explosives to blow the pillbox open. After a terrific explosion, another Marine with a flamethrower shot searing napalm into the bunker.
Tatum says Basilone grabbed his machine gun, moved up the hill and, firing from the hip, mowed down Japanese soldiers who were trying to escape the pillbox but couldn't escape the burning jellied gas that clung to them.
Tatum says he and Basilone moved forward from the beach to the edge of an airstrip, and set up the machine gun in a shell hole where they drew both enemy fire from Surabachi and friendly fire from U.S. Navy ships. Tatum says Basilone told them to hold the position at all costs and then moved on leading other Marines across the plateau. "An incoming mortar round exploded in their midst. Basilone and five of his men were killed." The 29 year old Gunnery Sergeant would be awarded the Navy Cross for his actions on Iwo, the only Marine enlisted man receive both the Medal of Honor and Navy Cross in WWII.
Tatum continued fighting on the volcanic rock of Iwo for two weeks - - on some days unable to advance from his foxhole. Casualties for the 1st Battalion, 27th Marines were so high that surviving troops scrabbled together could make up only one big company. Steven Evanson would also later be killed.
Before Iwo was fully secured, Tatum was removed from battle due to combat fatigue. Tatum says a psychologist later told him the trauma he sustained, " 'would be as if every time you stepped off the curb to cross the street, you almost got hit by a Peterbuilt. And this is happening to you about 300 times a day. Who really knows how many bullets missed you by a millimeter.' "
But on the fifth day of the assault a dramatic event showed Tatum why the invasion was needed - - a B-29 circled the island, radioing for permission to land. "I think the name was 'Dynamite'. They had to move some bulldozers and throw some rocks in a hole or something (for the B-29 to land). And he nearly taxied into Japanese territory."
"That was one of many planes that Iwo Jima looked like a beacon of hope - - that if they (B-29 crews) could hold out to Iwo Jima, they could make it. The deadly cost of Iwo Jima, 6,821 Americans, is easily offset by the 25,000 airmen whose lives were saved because there was a friendly landing field there."
Iwo proved more than a haven for damaged, fuel-starved B-29s, for the airfields built there allowed long range fighter escorts that fended off interceptors over Japan. Iwo also was an emergency option for the Enola Gay's mission to Hiroshima.
Author Edward Jablonski wrote the book Airwar , he recorded the praise of an anonymous B-29 pilot - - "Whenever I land on this island, I thank God and the men who fought for it."